The Haunted Railroad Tracks of San Antonio, Texas
Many myths and legends end with an angry ghost, a spirit out on the hunt for more victims. They look for revenge on those who wronged them or others but sometimes, the spirits of those taken by a tragic event stay on this plane, not for revenge but to help.
Benevolent spirits who look out for those making the same mistakes as they did in the past to ensure no other deaths occur. This is what is said to happen down in San Antonio, Texas, near some infamous railroad tracks where the spirits of many are said to linger.
But is the legend based on actual fact or is there a more scientific explanation for the supposed ghosts that haunt the tracks?
Located almost directly across from the San Antonio River, the tracks at the intersection of Shane Road and Villamain Road are said to be the location where a tragic accident in the 1930s took the lives of multiple children.
And today the spirits of those children are rumored to still be around, attempting to save others from a similar fate.
PART 1 - The Story
On a cold December Sunday in 1938, a slow-moving storm moved into the San Antonio area. Miles from the city, a local nun leading a school field trip noticed the dark clouds but was confident it would do little to hinder their way back home.
With the sun setting in the distance she hurried the children onto the bus and before she started the engine, many were fast asleep. The sound of the engine rumbled through the dark, down Shane road, but when approaching the intersection it sputtered and stopped lifeless on the tracks.
The nun looked back at the still-sleeping children and attempted to start the engine but it only crackled, refusing to start. From a distance, she could hear the sounds of an oncoming train but there was no light visible and she hoped it was the sounds of a train having already passed.
Moments later, she knew it wasn’t.
A train with a broken headlamp came roaring into view and the nun’s heart dropped. She knew she wouldn’t have enough time to evacuate the children and could only hope to get the bus started.
She panicked, frantically turning the key, the engine sputtered to life but died almost immediately. On the oncoming train, the conductor only noticed the bus stalled on the tracks when it was too late to stop.
The train ripped through the school bus, the impact propelled the nun through the windshield. Though she was severely injured, she survived but as for the sleeping children, every one of them died. Several days later a headline in the San Antonio Express read “Bus-Train Death Toll Likely to Go as High as 30”.
After the Crash
Though the nun recovered, the guilt weighed heavy on her. Weeks after the accident, she couldn’t bear to continue on and drove her car onto the same tracks where the children died. There, she sat in silence waiting for an oncoming train to take her life.
Just after sunset, a light flickered in the distance before coming into view, the headlamp of an oncoming train. The nun closed her eyes, resigned to her fate but moments later, she heard whispers. As they grew louder, the voices sounded like children, the same children who died weeks earlier.
Her car began to roll forward on its own as if pushed by some unknown force from behind. As her car reached the other side of the tracks the train barrelled through completely avoiding her.
The nun jumped out of her car and searched around seeing no one in the immediate vicinity or distance. But when she looked at the back of her car she saw multiple small handprints. The spirits of the children who died weeks ago had pushed her car to safety.
After this, the nun opened an orphanage and devoted her life to taking care of the children there until her final days.
Legends of Ghosts
Since that day the stories of ghostly children protecting any car that stops on the tracks have spread across the country.
Many who have gone to test the legend supposedly hear the voices and whispers of children around them before their car is pushed off the tracks. Once they're in a safe spot they claim to have found handprints on the back of their cars just as the nun did decades ago.
But is the story of the nun and the ghostly children even a true story?
PART 2 - The True Story
“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
From the 1962 film “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”
Variations of The Haunted Railroad Tracks
Despite many claiming the stories of ghostly children saving the nun are true, there are actually several different variations to the story telling us it might be false. The most common variation doesn’t involve a nun and is simply an unnamed bus driver taking several children to school when the bus stalls on the tracks.
Depending on the version you hear the story takes place either in the early morning or just before sunset on a weekday with the train killing everyone on the bus including the driver. Other versions say some children were able to evacuate the bus with the train killing at most ten of the children.
Each version has its own variations including what happens after the crash. Versions with the nun said she attempts to get hit by the train and is saved while versions without the nun say the streets around the railroad tracks were named in honor of the children who lost their lives.
With the surrounding streets named Bobbie Allen, Nancy Carole, and Cindy Sue Way, it’s not hard to see why many believe the legend.
The Real Accident in Salt Lake City, Utah
But, was there ever a train accident involving a school bus in 1938? Yes, except it didn’t happen in San Antonio. The headline in the San Antonio Express newspaper from 1938 reading “Bus-Train Death Toll Likely to Go as High as 30” was a real headline but it was written about an accident that occurred in Salt Lake City, Utah.
On December 1st, 1938 a bus with thirty-seven teenagers was on its way to Jordan High School through a foggy winter morning with falling snow. The bus driver did not see the oncoming train nor hear the whistle it sounded as it barreled towards them at fifty miles per hour.
Seeing the bus slowly pulling over the tracks, the train crew pulled the brakes but were too late to avoid a crash. The collision killed 22 students and the bus driver, it was the worst bus accident in United States history at the time.
This led to the story being published in many newspapers across the country such as the New York Times, Salt Lake Tribune, and the San Antonio Express as front-page news.
Over time, the memories of a tragic accident and it appearing on the front page of the newspaper could easily merge in the memories of some and cause people to believe the accident took place in San Antonio as opposed to Salt Lake City.
But why would the stories get mixed up over time unless there was something weird happening at the railroad tracks in San Antonio? It turns out the reports of something strange at the tracks aren’t entirely false but the explanations are more natural than supernatural.
PART 3 - Explaining the Supernatural
The Cars
Over the decades many who have believed the legend of ghostly children on the tracks have gone out late at night in attempts to prove the story. They head to the intersection of Villamain and Shane Road, place their car in neutral, and wait, hoping to catch proof of the supernatural.
To their shock, it takes only moments before they feel something pushing their car from behind. Slowly their car moves over and past the railroad tracks to relative safety. Many leave the area believing in the legends and stories but we now know no child has ever died on the tracks in that intersection, so what exactly is going on?
Although it appears the tracks are at a slight incline they are actually at a slight decline, meaning any car left in neutral will naturally roll over the tracks. Movement within the car, say a person looking around, will cause forward momentum to build up and contribute to the car’s movement.
Handprints
But many who still believe the legends point to the handprints left on their cars after it’s pushed. Some have even covered the back of their cars in baby powder or flour so the prints are more prominent after the ghostly push.
In reality, our hands and fingers are covered in oils that are left behind when we touch objects, these oils are invisible to the naked eye but are easily seen when covered in a fine powder. These oils can often stay on objects even after being washed in water.
The different sizes of handprints some have reported are simply due to the fact we don’t always place our entire hands on everything we touch. Using only a few fingers or parts of our hands to close and open a vehicle’s trunk will create the appearance of smaller hands.
The Picture
During research for this legend, I kept coming across a picture of the railroad tracks taken by Andy and Debi Chesney or their daughter which allegedly depicts a ghost. The supposed ghost could easily be attributed to a smudge on the camera but it’s difficult to tell as many versions of the picture online have been altered and filtered to make the figure more prominent.
Finding any actual information on the picture is also difficult to find but appears to have been first uploaded on the internet in 2008. Unfortunately, the majority of those websites are no longer up and those that are, give no more information on those that took the picture, what type of camera was used, or if the picture is even actually of the San Antonio train tracks.
In the end, many of the stories of the hauntings at the railroad tracks can be easily debunked but many still believe something lingers on the tracks. In my research, I could find no evidence of any deaths having occurred in that area, yet to this day many still believe.
But for now, we know if there is something haunting the tracks it’s not the spirits of the children on the school bus as that tragic accident happened over thirteen hundred miles away.
But how about you do you think there is something haunting the train tracks and if so, what could it be?
Learn a Little Bit of Everything!
Myths, Mysteries, & Monsters
